This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, college readiness, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues with additional focus at the national level.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

TUCSON -- Arizona is the New South and the new South Africa. It is thehome of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, where racial profiling is official policy.Now, in another form of profiling, State Superintendent of Schools TomHorne wants to eliminate ethnic studies.

At his behest and by a 4-3 Senate panel vote, an amendment toeducation bill S.B. 1069 was passed that emphasizes the teaching ofindividualism at the expense of ethnic studies. The bill would permitthe department of education to withhold 10 percent of state monies ifethnic studies continue to exist. The full legislature is expected topass it within several weeks, and Republican Gov. Jan Brewer isexpected to sign it into law.

Horne has spent two-and-a-half years pushing this bill, and it willeffectively send Arizona school children into the dark ages.Overriding the concept of local control, Horne wants Arizona teachersto impose one view of America upon the state’s children.

His objective, according a press release from his office, is “toprohibit ethnic studies in Arizona public schools.” But his realobjective appears to be ensuring that only the nation’s sacrosanctnational narrative is taught in schools.

This narrative is presumably the nation’s greatest asset. It is acompilation of foundational myths and legends that defines the UnitedStates as the New Promised Land -– a nation chosen by God toessentially create heaven on earth. Its secular version is tomilitarily spread freedom, democracy and capitalism to the rest of theworld.

Horne joins the likes of Newt Gingrich, Tom Tancredo, Rush Limbaugh,Lou Dobbs and all their talk-show brethren, in both promotingscapegoat politics and in corrupting the English language.

In Horne’s America, genocide, slavery, land theft, segregation,discrimination, extralegal brutality and racial supremacy are taughtas footnotes at best, or disappeared altogether. In his America,exclusion is inclusion and ignorance is bliss. In attempting to imposehis philosophy, he fancies himself as carrying on the work of MartinLuther King, Jr. He oxymoronically accuses ethnic studies educators ofpromoting racism and separatism.

The legislation targets ethnic studies, but exempts “classes orcourses for Native American pupils that are required to comply withfederal law.” Also exempted are classes for English learners. Horne’sactual target is Raza Studies at Tucson Unified School district. Inhis crusade, he accuses Raza Studies of promoting “ethnic chauvinism”and of being a “dysfunctional program.”

Nicollete Gomez, who was in both Native American and Raza Studies atTucson High School, says, “The outsiders who say that we are'unAmerican' and 'dysfunctional' obviously do not sit in these classesto experience intellectual students ready for college material.”

Horne is seemingly unaware that students from Raza Studies, who aretaught about their indigenous cultures, consistently outperformstudents from all backgrounds at TUSD. They also have a very highcollege-going rate. Research by Dr. Augustine Romero, former directorof Raza Studies, confirms this phenomenal success.

Facts are of no concern to Horne. Only the nation’s foundationalmyths/legends are important. This includes, as he told theultra-conservative Heritage Foundation in 2007, the Greco-Roman rootsof western civilization.

Lecia J. Brooks, director of the Civil Rights Memorial Center andTeaching Tolerance at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the nation’spremier center for tracking hate crime, says, “The teaching ofso-called 'individualism' is but another example of Western Europeancultural dominance. This is madness. Educators everywhere shoulddeclare in one voice: 'Culturally relevant pedagogy actually improvesinstruction for all students—that is, if they’re allowed access toit.'”

As University of Arizona first-year student Pricila Rodriguez, a RazaStudies alum from Tucson High, also reminds us, “People that insistthat taxpayer money should not be used for ethnic studies forget thatwe are taxpayers, too.”

In protest, supporters in Tucson of ethnic studies will stage atwo-day march to Phoenix on June 28 and 29. It’s about 90 milesthrough desert heat. But it’s one way to put the heat on Tom Horne.

Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez, assistant professor at the University ofArizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com. It can be read at NewAmerica's website: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/